Two emerging graphic novelists talk about crafting their debuts with chair, Paul Gravett. Gareth Brookes is a fine artist and print maker who started making small press comics in 2006. He won the First Graphic Novel Competition 2012 with The Black Project (Myriad Editions). Beautifully written and crafted in embroidery and linocut, it’s a darkly funny story of one boy’s obsession with creating ‘girls’ from household objects like papier mache, string and a balloon.

Isabel Greenberg is a London-based writer and illustrator who studied at the University of Brighton. She won the Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story Prize in 2011 with her tale Love in a Very Cold Climate. Her latest book, the charming and hugely original graphic novel, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, is an imaginative look at an earth populated by Nordic explorers and Suit girls, gods and monsters.